Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Nicolas Princen becomes the cyber spy of Nicolas Sarkozy

HEC alumni Nicolas Princen has been hired by French presidency as Internet monitor.

The French blogospher already nicknamed Nicolas Princen the "cyber spy", as he is responsible of the Internet surveillence of what is being said about Nicolas Sarkozy on the web. A lot of these bloggers disapprove this move as they feel threatened by censor.

Indeed, Nicolas Sarkozy is a specialist of the blunders since he became French president. One of the main one was when he insulted a person who did not want to shake his hand "sale con" (sod off) during French agriculture show couple of weeks ago. The video of this event has been seen more than 2 million times on youtube. Because of these kind of bad publicity on the Internet l'Elysee decided to control more intensively the web.

I think that in our image society it is important for a French president to control its image. I think that it shows that Internet has become one of the main media nowadays, and Nicolas Sarkozy understood it. This media is going way faster than anyone else, and it requires specific attention to master it. An information can be sent on the web couple of seconds after it happened, via laptops or cell phones. Therefore he wants to make sure his communication on the web is properly managed.

Once again, I am not approving or promoting any kind of political ideas. However, I think that this news is important as it shows how the Internet has evolved this past few years to become one of the main media to survey for personalities and of course politicians.